American Trails has a wide variety of on-line information and opportunities for trail planners, including its internet-based “Advancing Trails Webinar Series.”
Each webinar lasts about 90 minutes and focuses on a topic of interest to planners of motorized and non-motorized trails.
A national nonprofit organization that works on behalf of all trail interests, American Trails has been presenting webinars since 2010. One held in April was titled “Telling a Better Story: Best Practices for Developing Interpretive Panels for Trails.” It can be purchased on the American Trails online store: http://www.atfiles.org/store/.
Scheduled for June 28th is a webinar titled “The Art of Sustainable Trail Management.” It is geared primarily toward beginning and intermediate level trail builders, including volunteers, agency staff and professional trail crews.
Presenting the webinar is Tony Boone, a professional trail contractor with a background in high adventure outdoor pursuits and cultural resource management. “I feel fairly safe in saying that those of us involved in the trail industry are happier with our lives than many Americans,” writes Boone in a recent American Trails article titled Sharing our love of dirt: trail building in the Philippines. “Whether we are professional trail builders, trail advocates, volunteers, trail users, or a combination of all of these, our quality of life is more frequently enlivened by the presence of great outdoor recreation than our pursuit of the all mighty dollar.”
Participants in the webinar will learn the basics behind developing and managing natural surface, shared-use trail systems. Topics range from bench cut construction to rolling contour design, and include Boone’s “10 Guidelines for Sustainable Trail Planning Design, Construction and Maintenance.” They are:
1. Average Trail Grades
2. Maximum Tread Grades
3. Relationship of the Trail to Sideslope
4. Managing Water through Rolling Contour Design
5. Understanding Soils and Climate
6. Getting into the Head of Users
7. Understanding Control Points
8. Balancing Nature & Human Impacts
9. Creating Synergistic Partnerships
10. Understanding Weak Links and the Big Picture
The webinar is Thursday, June 28th, from 10 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. Pacific time, 1:00 p.m. to 2:15 Eastern time. The cost is $25 for American Trails members and $45 for non-members. For complete details and to register, visit: American Trails’ "The Art of Sustainable Trail Management" Webinar.
Keep an eye out for future American Trails webinars. Those in the planning stages include “World Class Bridges” and “Nitty Gritty of Tunnels, Culverts and Crossings.”
For additional information, contact Candace Mitchell, Executive Assistant & Communications Specialist, International Trails Symposium Exhibitor Coordinator, American Trails at (530) 547-2060 or by email to:
candace@americantrails.org.